Episode 78: Developing Ed Tech with Ethan Pierce of Adaptive Reader

Ethan Pierce, a serial entrepreneur and Co-Founder and CEO of Adaptive Reader, has transformed his early struggles with reading into a catalyst for innovation in education. A Harvard graduate and Mitchell Scholar, Ethan's journey from confronting his own reading challenges to spearheading Adaptive Reader underscores his commitment to making educational content accessible and engaging for all students. Through his work, Ethan leverages cutting-edge AI and thoughtful design to help students overcome reading difficulties and embrace learning in their native languages. His leadership at Adaptive Reader is driven by a vision to ensure no student is left behind because of language barriers or learning differences, making him a pioneer in creating a more equitable educational landscape.

In this episode, we discussed Ethan’s path that lead to the creation of Adaptive Reader. We also dive into the world of AI and how his business is helping those struggling with reading.

 

Topics Discussed:

  • How learning struggles inspired Ethan’s business

  • Using AI for ed tech

  • Making reading easier for everyone

Resources mentioned:

Related episodes and blog posts:

 
 
 
 

Read the transcript for this episode:

Welcome to Educator Forever, where we empower teachers to innovate education. Join us each week to hear stories of teachers expanding their impacts beyond the classroom and explore ways to reimagine teaching and learning.

Lily Jones

Ethan Pierce, a serial entrepreneur and co founder and CEO of adaptive reader has transformed his early struggles with reading into a catalyst for innovation and education. A Harvard graduate and Mitchell scholar Ethan's journey from confronting his own reading challenges to spearheading adaptive reader underscores his commitment to making educational content accessible and engaging for all students. Through his work, Ethan leverages cutting edge AI and thoughtful design to help students overcome reading difficulties and embrace learning in their native languages. His leadership and adaptive reader is driven by a vision to ensure no student is left behind because of language barriers or learning differences, making him a pioneer and creating a more equitable educational landscape. Welcome, Ethan. So glad to have you here with us.

Ethan Pierce

Thank you so much for having me.

Lily Jones

Yeah. Well, I'd love to have you explain to our audience what your project or your business Adaptive Reader is and why you decided to start it?

Ethan Pierce

Absolutely, yeah. So with Adaptive Reader, we're using a combination of large language models and native language speakers to take classic literature and translate it into 90 languages and multiple reading levels in English. And the goal here is really to make sure that we're making this literature accessible for everyone, and giving every student the scaffolding that they need to comprehend the classics, both in their first language, and also in English. Yes,

Lily Jones

I love that. And I was lucky enough to give a little preview of what this looks like. And it's so cool to see the different supports for different students and the accessibility that the product provides. And I'd love to hear a little bit about what led you to develop this product, what challenges you experienced growing up, and what kind of inspired you to start this?

Ethan Pierce

Yeah, 1,000%. I was one of those students who, and if their grade hadn't learned to read, continued to struggle into middle school, and I was enticed by AP classes, I have those pullout. And I'm really grateful that you know, a couple of teachers paid attention to me along the way. I had one teacher who, you know, took me home for dinner, every Friday, my night in high school, I hit three, I don't know if that's still allowed. But that's great. You know, I was so lucky to have these teachers take an interest in me. And I was lucky to go from really struggling to getting a full scholarship to Harvard. And I think looking back, and looking at, you know, folks around me who didn't graduate from high school, who I was close to, and how different our lives are now. I'm so aware that if a couple of things had gone differently, differently, my life could have been taking a dramatically different course. And so what's really important for me, I had an opportunity to work in tech in the last decade, and how can we use some of the technology development? AI is very hot right now, how can we use this in a way that is really appropriate and acknowledges the limitations of the technology we're currently in? That provides the scaffolding for every student to be able to understand and to be able to see a path towards gaining both literary skills and fluency?

Lily Jones

Yes, I love that. And I especially love thinking about how awesome it was that you had that experience with your teacher, and how awesome it is of thinking about how you can bring that to more students. I also appreciate as you were talking about both the pros and cons of using technology in the classroom. And especially with AI, like, there are great things that we can bring with this. And also some things that can't happen, or limitations or things like that. So I appreciate you kind of bringing that up. But I'm wonder if you can talk a little bit more about the role of AI and technology in adaptive reader?

Ethan Pierce

Absolutely. So AI is very central to what we do and makes what we're doing scalable. So I think, you know, if we think back 10 years ago, even before the time of AI like this is a solution that I think has always had the opportunity to be impactful. We've seen companies like Nutella, that have actually hired many people to go through and manually rewrite texts that multiple reading levels and in multiple languages. But the ability to do that at scale with books that are hundreds of 1000s of words, long and across many languages. For example, the Portland High School in Maine, which is where I grew up has 53 languages spoken in the classroom, and my C Department of Education I believe they had 151 languages. going across, across their districts in 2021. So we really lean on AI to these large language models. To help us do that first half, we incorporate 12 different large language models in the back end. And we actually train these AI to help do that first level of proofreading for us. So we're building in these quality control mechanisms. And they also use a variety of literacy indexes. So might be familiar with the flesh Kincaid scores, or the gunning fog, we built all of this tooling in, that helps our editor, we do hire, actually English teachers for all of our levels, English versions, they go through their passage by passage, and really make sure that we've retained those core elements, we don't take anything from the book, it's really important to us that this isn't about dumbing these books, dang, it is about changing a sentence structure and vocabulary that allows the student to approach it from a place of confidence and understanding. And then where they can come together with that teacher, you know, from that zone of proximal development perspective, this is their opportunity. This is what they can do on their own. And we try and push them and encourage teachers to push them to, you know, you want to be building those skill. And then you can come together as a class with that teacher, there is a support, and everyone can go through that original text, already knowing what's happening. But being scaffolded, to understand the really rich, beautiful language that the author wrote,

Lily Jones

yeah, the access and accessibility and you know, really letting kids have the support they need to participate is so powerful. And I love how you're thinking about both how to use AI to really do things that like, like you were saying, wouldn't be able to happen in a short amount of time to say the least, you know, translating things, not only to different reading levels, but also to different languages. But that also you still have that human and like teacher component of having a teacher come in and be like, is this really retaining the qualities of the text? And is this really going to support my students? So I think that mix is really powerful as well. And I'm wondering if you can talk a little bit about like, if a teacher uses this one of these texts in their classroom, like, what does that look like? Like if I was teaching, The Great Gatsby and I had students with different reading levels and different home languages, like what would that look like?

Ethan Pierce

Yeah, I'm 1,000%. So I think one thing that surprises a lot of folks, I have a copy of one of our paperbacks right here. So this is the scarlet letter, we do have a digital version of this product, that students can go in there, and they can select what level they want to read from what language they want to read in. And one of the features, the features rather, that gets teachers really excited is the students can actually view the passage, we break down our text into these small bite sized chunks, they can view it at that adapted, and that adapted language side by side with the original, or they can view it in Mandarin, or in Urdu, side by side with the English language version of the text. And so the understanding that they're building, with this version that helps them access that content, bridges over to helping them understand the text and language that everyone's using. And so all of our languages, all of our versions are available in paperback. And we even go so far as you probably won't be able to see here, but we have to have six numbers in our paperback books, as well. So you as the teacher, let's say you want to get every student, if you have a mixed class, where you have students from Vietnam, and China, and Pakistan, all in the same class, with students from Spanish, speaking Spanish and English, you can tell every student to go to passage 78. And they're at the same point in the story, no matter what language they're reading, or what reading level, they're accessing the text.

Lily Jones

I think it's so powerful having that opportunity to to all still be on the same page, that is not saying that this group is gonna go over here and work on something completely different. And I love how you built in the tools for a teacher to really manage that as well. And I know when we were talking before you were saying like, there are no special covers for students who are, you know, maybe adapted level, and that really, that kind of normalizes that we're all reading the same book, but maybe just in slightly different ways.

Ethan Pierce

So 1,000% That's something that's really integral to us and it's super important to me. Like I remember being pulled out of those classrooms and Education is a psychological experience as much as anything else. And so one of the things that's so important for us is protecting students dignity. So that's why you know, all of our covers, regardless of whether or not you're reading, you know, that Pashto or that Mandarin version are exactly the same. And so you actually have to flip to the first page to see, okay, what reading level? What language is that, that students don't feel called out? And, you know, at the end of the day, the reason that we read this literature, yes, it's for that rich language. And yes, we want every student to get to a point where they're able to appreciate that. We're also reading these novels, because their stories challenge us they bring these critical thinking questions to mind about character development about, right, like when we read Frankenstein, can we relate that to this fear that we have today of losing control of our technology? And that balance, right, so those are the questions that everyone in the classroom can engage with, from their own unique perspective, their own background. And so we try and make sure that everyone understands the story well enough to participate and develop those critical thinking skills. Definitely,

Lily Jones

I think that's something that's missing so often from classrooms too – is being able to give all students access to those higher level questions and opportunities to analyze and connect to their own life. So and I love that here, you know, it's really about supporting students, no matter what their level of English proficiency, or their level of reading, you know, to be able to have that same level of questions. And I also just wanted to highlight how helpful I think it is in the digital version, being able to see the original text side by side that the adapted text and how that transfer can be really supportive for students. You know, I know that like when I'm reading something in Spanish, seeing something in English is very helpful for me to be able to go back and forth and really kind of analyze like, Oh, what is the sentence structure like in Spanish versus English? Oh, what is that vocabulary word and having that support right there.

Ethan Pierce

1,000%. It's really interesting. It's one of my favorite, actually questions or activities that teachers do with their students with these adapted versions, they ask them to do that side by side comparison as the original. And one of our, you know, adapted versions. So our goal typically brings down the grade level by two to three grade levels, and our silver brings it down by four to six grade levels. So if you're working from a 10th, or 11th, grade tech, you know, you're getting down to that fifth to sixth grade reading level. And they'll ask the students, hey, compare these two passages? What's different? What's different about the language? What's different about the sentence structure? And it's exciting to see the students dive into that? And it starts to open the bridge for them to say, oh, I can read, I can understand that more complex version, I can understand that vocabulary.

Lily Jones

Yeah, that feels like amorphous. Yeah, so powerful. I mean, it feels amorphous on my eyes to be like, Oh, you're struggling in reading? Well, what does that look like to not be struggling? What does that look like to be on grade level and for students, particularly, you know, older students, to be able to have that knowledge is so powerful, where it's no longer really like I, you know, I'm using this adaptive text and being focused on that, but seeing it as a bridge, so that everybody can access the grade level text.

Ethan Pierce

1,000% Yeah.

Lily Jones

Great. So I'd love to hear about the long term vision for Adaptive Reader.

Ethan Pierce

Yeah, absolutely. I think looking ahead, and really our core is how do we make these texts or really any text accessible to all students, regardless of their background? So I think a couple of really exciting things, we've already sort of delved a little bit. We've soft launched our, our multilingual editions. So if you go to our website right now, you'll see that all of our texts are now in Spanish. And we've added a handful of other languages to some of our texts, including Urdu and Vietnamese, traditional or simplified Chinese. So we're going to be formally launching that in a couple of weeks. So we'll be adding a lot of languages and looking forward. You know, we're going to really try to support those schools like Portland High School in Maine, but those 53 languages, how can we support every student not only making sure that the text is translated in a way that's supportive, but we're also adding audio with AI generated audio that sounds like a real person so that they can for students we often hear right, especially for newcomers, you know, they may be fluent in their first language at eleven. Many of them may not have had formal schooling, though. And so they're entering ninth or 10th grade with a lot of really great language. But they do have they have a rich vocabulary, and I'm one, but they may not have reading fluency. So can we still leverage that first language to unlock meaning, and help them to participate in class and start to unlock those, that English language learning,

Lily Jones

I think that's super helpful, and especially having the option of different access points for different students and different supports to bring in. And then thinking about, you know, just the role of edtech, and how you see edtech evolving, particularly in supporting educational disparities or inequities.

Ethan Pierce

If that wasn't present, I think what we're seeing right now, I have some incredible potential. At the same time, we've done about 85, user research interviews over the past 12 months, to understand teachers experience, and understand how we can build this product in a way that meets them, where they're at a couple of the really interesting things that we've noticed, over 90% of the educators that we interviewed, preferred or strongly preferred to give their students a paper version of reading material, whether that's printing them out, or getting paper back. Because I think post pandemic, there's sort of this pendulum swinging back towards that, and especially when we hear students are in classrooms with 35 of their peers, right? These large classes that teachers are being overwhelmed with, being able to get all the kids off the screen, and focused on that material is really important. So one thing that I'm really interested in for edtech is we have a lot, there's a lot of really exciting things that are happening in terms of, you know, AI tutors, and chatbots and things like that, where I'm really excited to see more Ed techs and more innovators work in the space is, how do we take the amazing personalization that AI can produce in terms of language in terms of crafting questions, and assignments that are really tailored to individual students? How do we bring that out of the screen as well, and directly address some of these challenges that that teachers face every day in the classroom? So that's what I'm excited to see more of. And I hope there's a really rich discourse around that.

Lily Jones

Yeah, I agree. I mean, there's so much possibility there. And I think you've touched on this a little bit. But I'm curious how you see educators and technologists really collaborating in this next chapter of edtech.

Ethan Pierce

Yeah, great question. I think it's so critical. And for every edtech person out there, go out and the thing that we did, when we started this, it was really funny. I went on a site called Upwork. I don't know if you've heard of it. And I hired seven teachers to do to just sit with me for a 30 minute interview, not knowing anything about me. Very anonymous, I told them, you're not going to offend me with anything you say. And I just asked questions. And it was so helpful to have these people who weren't trying to impress me, just tell about what they experienced every day in the classroom. And we've continued to build on that ever since. We're talking to educators constantly. I love those conversations. They're so valuable, because educators bring that real lived experience that's so critical to take what are often really well intentioned and often really brilliant ideas and morphed them into solutions that are classroom ready. And that can be enabled without creating additional work and friction for those educators.

Lily Jones

Absolutely. And I love that you started by talking with educators. It's something that in our business programs, we always talk about, you know, really connecting with the people you hope to help from the beginning. And we get so in our own heads sometimes being like, Oh, this is what I think would be helpful that I think it's so important to build into anything that you're building, talking to people regularly who are the people who will be using your product. And I think thinking about teachers using this in their classroom too, I mean, anything that's great for teachers gives them autonomy, too. So it's a tool that they can use. And it's never going to be used exactly the same in every classroom. And I think realizing, as you do you know that that's not the goal. And so hearing from teachers about the many different ways that they might adapt adaptive reader for their various purposes, too. And so I'm curious to also about just your process of building adaptive reader and what you've learned about yourself through building this product.

Ethan Pierce

Yeah, so I'm a third time founder now. Always, always an adventure, every step along the way. And I think one thing that I've learned over the years is how bad I was doing user research. Early on, and now I feel like it's such an area of strength to sort of recognize the humility and a way up just how little you now going into these conversations and how much you can learn from every one of them. If you don't get in the way of them, answering the questions, I think it's really easy for us to lead, lead the horse to water for the answer that we want. And these questions, and I've done it, and I'm sure I'll do it again. Many times, by just going in with that, that open curiosity and humility to those conversations and really inquiring to to what's happening now. It's something that I think leads to really exciting, new insights.

Lily Jones

Wonderful. Yeah, true collaboration, you know, of really getting all different points of information, and using that going forward can be so powerful. And then along with that, kind of the flip side, for teachers out there who are maybe thinking about doing something on their own or going into edtech. What advice would you give educators who want to transition into the field

Ethan Pierce

of edtech? Great question. So we've been lucky enough to hire several folks who are our former former teachers to come and help us. And wow, I'm always like, blown away by how multi talented teachers are. Yes. I like I sometimes think about it this way, like, what other job do you have, like 120 direct reports. I am continually blown away by educators. And I think where there's an opportunity is, is to go out. I love the folks that we work with, we just, you know, even from our user interviews, these were folks that were just like putting themselves out there and starting to engage with a text in really low friction ways. And then they would follow up and just say, like, hey, you know, if there's ever anything else you need, let us know. And some of those people have become our editors. And we're so lucky to have them, because they bring so much value. And so I think similarly, coming from a place of curiosity, and, and going out there and finding where where at tech folks are and finding where you can come in with a place of curiosity to understand, you know, what are the problems they're facing day to day? And how can you lend your expertise?

Lily Jones

I love the focus on curiosity. I mean, I think that often it can feel like doing anything new, especially professionally, you know, being like, Oh, I have to do it the right way. Or, like, make these connections or something like that. But it's really about authentically connecting with people who are doing things that you feel aligned with. And so that kind of takes the pressure off, right? But like, yeah, not everybody's gonna be a good fit or not every project is going to be a good fit for whatever you believe about education or what your passions or focuses are. But really having that sense of curiosity as a guiding light, you know, as you explore different things and kind of let different relationships unfold.

Ethan Pierce

Yes. 100% and hopefully it will lead to something really fulfilling for each person who's who's starting out on that journey. Absolutely

Lily Jones

wonderful. Well, it was so nice to talk with you, Ethan. Can you tell our audience where they can connect with you or find out more about adaptive reader?

Ethan Pierce

Absolutely. So if you go to adaptive reader.com You're also welcome to email me at Ethernet adapter breeder if you have questions. Or just want to say hello, always happy to meet educators.

Lily Jones

Wonderful. And we'll put all the links in the show notes as well thanks so much Ethan

Ethan Pierce

Thanks so much for having me

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

Lily Jones